Rumors are rife that Cycle News has closed it’s doors after nearly 50 years of motorcycle print publishing. Once the pinnacle publication of the industry, Cycle News has slowly seen its readership get eaten up by conglomerate driven publications like Cycle World, Motorcyclist, and Sport Rider…and of course web-based motorcycle news sites like yours truly. As Superbike Planet’s Dean Adams puts it, “if true, this is truly the end of an era for the motorcycle publishing industry,” we couldn’t agree more.

Sitting in the media center at the Indianapolis GP this weekend, it was already apparent that more web-based media outlets have gained entry into the MotoGP paddock (Asphalt & Rubber included), and that pens and paper have been replaced by mobile phones with twitter during the press conferences. Cycle News, while still a staple to the old-guard in the industry, is just one of many print publications to find itself behind the times and unable to support the overhead of print journalism, and incapable of adapting to online content delivery.

According to Quantcast’s directly measured statistics (usually under-reporting from actual), Cycle News has slowly been losing traffic, with August seeing 70,000 unique visitors come to the site. It’s never a positive thing to see a company close it’s doors, and we wish the best to Clayton’s in their future endeavors. While rumors suggest that the print version of the publication is almost surely on death’s doorstep, it hasn’t been mentioned if the publication will fold completely, or exist purely online as British rag Visordown did recently.

Anyway, I picked up the most recent edition of Cycle News yesterday and read about the latest MotoGP race … the Czech MotoGP, the Czech MotoGP that took place Aug. 15. It was a little weird since Sunday night I was able to click online to read about the IndyGP that took place earlier that day.

So, yeah, a print publication isn’t the best medium for timely, consistent events like motorcycle races, which was Cycle News’ biggest area of coverage. I like to read features in my print publications, and I go online for up-to-the-minute coverage.

http://www.footshifted.com Footshifted

Maybe they should kill the ‘subscribe’ links and ‘subscribe’ graphics on their site??? Just saying…

Steve Lang

They say that change is a good thing and I guess it is, but with that change comes a loss of something sometimes. I’ve been a Police Officer for the past 30 years and retired last week. My divorce will be final soon after a four year battle and I lost my home in the proccess. If I can reinvent myself after all of this at age 58, I’m sure the bright folks at Cycle News will too.